


Deception in Kyber - The Mayur Affair

by PaxDuane



Series: Deception in Kyber [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Kidnapping, Chalacta is space India at first, Chalactan Adepts, Chalactan culture, Coruscant (Star Wars), Disabled Character, Espionage, Exploration of the Force and relationships, F/M, Falling In Love, Food, Force Bond (Star Wars), Galactic Republic, History of the Galactic Republic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jedi Culture, Mandalorian Culture, Politics, The First Mandalorian Exiles, The Second Galactic Republic, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, Time is Weird, kind of, mentioned - The Mandalorian-Jedi Wars, mentioned - history of droid development, origins of Death Watch, origins of the True Mandalorians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25518208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxDuane/pseuds/PaxDuane
Summary: 868 years before the Battle of Yavin, 848 years before the fall of the Second Galactic Republic, 836 years before Jango Fett is approached to be the template for a clone army, and 636 years before the high point of the Second Galactic Republic, Coruscant is on the edge of something.Of course, Princess Adept Akshita Billaba would argue it’s always on the edge of something. Still, as she helps prepare for the official entrance of Naboo into the Republic and the arrival of the first Naboo senator, she’s cautious.When her planet’s senator decides to use her to swindle payment for his gambling debts out of her cousin, the King of Chalacta, she knows things are just beginning. And so does bounty hunter Viin “Blue” Vhett, hired to kidnap and hold her.Vhett is new to the games of political upset on Coruscant, but Akshita is pleased he’s a quick learner.
Relationships: Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Deception in Kyber [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839124
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

In a smokey room in one of the lower levels of the already towering Coruscant blocks, a Chalactan man sits with a few other men over a game of sabacc. He smiles widely, white teeth glinting unnaturally, at his hand.

“Enjoying yourself, Senator?” the dealer asks, smiling back at him. Everyone at the table knows that Chalactan women and drogyns are the wealthier citizens, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have money.

“Always!” he says, leaning back in his chair. “You always know how to treat guests, Keno.”

Keno, one of the other players, shoots the man a grin of his own, gold covered teeth glinting. “It’s always nice to have more regular players.”

The round ends and the man sweeps his winnings up, punch drunk and thrilled.

“Another one?” Keno suggests, looking at the pile.

“I have nowhere to be until midmeal,” the man assures his host.

Keno taps the table twice, catching the dealer’s eye. The cards are dealt.

The man’s hand is not bad, and he is on a gambling high. He bets just about everything.

Keno’s hand is better, as the dealer made sure it would be.

The man is ruined. He pays his host, who invites him to the next game. He stumbles back to his Senate quarters, unsure of how he’ll get out of this.

***

“Senator Mayur?” Princess Akshita Billaba asks, looking up from her morning correspondence as the announcement bot warns her of this unexpected and uncalled for guest. She shuffles her flimsi and datapads together, putting them in the secret drawer under her jewelry in her vanity desk. She stands with only a slight tremor, brushing down any rumples in her morning _salwar kameez_ tunic, a pale red that is not quite pink. “Let him in and let him know I will be in the tearoom soon.”

The bot blinks out to do just that, leaving her to put in her earrings and nath ring. As she exits the room, she slips on numerous rings. They’re part of her personal wealth, mostly kept hidden except for state events. Or, in this case, assuring her cousin’s senate appointee that she is nothing but a silly girl obsessed with spark.

(Senator Mayur managed to change his clothes to something suited for meeting a member of his planet’s royal family. It will, of course, need to be sold to cover any expenses after this meeting. Unless, of course, he can dupe this practical child into bailing him out. His hair still smells of the smoke of his sabacc game, but they will be across a tea table from each other. The princess will not notice.)

Akshita catches a whiff of smoke, potently for pleasure. She smiles like the Senator’s arrival is an unexpected delight. Hopefully, she thinks, he is not asking me to back another of his awful lies about why the recent bill passed not in Chalacta’s favor but only in his own. The Chancellor, likely, would be his excuse. She knew her, after all, but allegedly not well enough to doubt allegations of corruption.

“Your highness,” Mayur simpers, bowing lightly and taking a seat after her.

“Senator, a pleasure as always,” she lies easily. “Though you are rather early! I was only just waking up.” A partying princess, head empty except for a desire for fleeting pleasures. Out until early, sleeping until late. “As you can tell, of course, since I’m not in my usual dress. The cloth from home is just so comfortable.” Yes, she liked her normal chemise style, but she did prefer to do her private work in the _salwar kameez_ styles she grew up in. And, of course, she’d been up for hours, working.

“I am so sorry to intrude on your early routine, though you really should have a lady’s maid at least to answer your door instead of that new-fangled bot.” Mayur says, trying to get his footing in the conversation. He never could understand why he couldn’t start out a conversation with the princess on his normal charismatic wattage. It wasn’t that she was royalty; he could turn it on with her cousin easily and the man outranked her by quite a bit, being the King. “I’ve come here because something terrible has come up.”

Akshita had to raise one eyebrow quickly to hide how the first one quirked up in interest. “Oh dear, what is it?”

“You see, some ruffians have swindled me quite dearly,” he started, voice unsure.

Sure, she thought, a likely story.

“I am no longer able to pay my expenses,” he continued. “My aides will starve or have to leave me. I will not be able to send credits home to my parents, who you know are frail. I certainly won’t be able to push through any of the King’s wishes through the senate in the most effective manner.”

The only part of that which wasn’t overblown, she thought, were that his aides would not be able to be paid. She frowned hard, like she was really having to process what he was saying. As it was, she was thinking about his parents who always were smart with their money and didn’t need their son sending them anything. In fact, she was sure he didn’t. Finally, she looked up and said, “I can see why this is so dire. Of course, I will pay your aides’ wages! They are Chalactan too. And I will, of course, give them the choice to return to our planet. With that taken care of, you can put all of your leftover resources towards taking care of yourself.”

The Senator’s face grew stormy for a moment, hatred and vileness flooding up before he tamped it down under his desperation. “No, your highness, you don’t understand! I am destitute! I have no leftover resources.”

She studied him, putting on a face of incomprehension. “Oh Senator, I’m sure you’re exaggerating. You are too smart to put everything in one basket, after all!” Words he’d told her, once, when she expressed dismay at one of his political decisions. “Your aides are practically children, around my age. I will take care of them, of course. If you really are close to the red, I will personally finance your return to Chalacta so someone else may take care of the Senate seat.”

She’s wanted him out long enough, this might be the perfect opportunity to put someone she actually likes on Coruscant.

The hatred flashes again, but the Senator slumps soon after. “I will think about your generous offer, your highness. As for my aides, I will send them here to make their arrangements.”

He leaves without touching his tea.

Akshita watches him go, suspicion building in the Force. He was desperate to keep his power and his wealth and had thought he could get her to restore him. But she’d used his words against him, sounding innocent in her logic with it. He’d been embarrassed by her memory.

Desperate men were dangerous, and so were embarrassed politicians. Mayur, leaving her apartment, was both.

She needs to be on guard.

***

Blue _hates_ Keno. The man is a complete bastard, a human supremacist, and altogether just scum. But he pays well. He has good contacts. And Blue really needs to refit his ship.

“I’ve got someone for you,” Keno says across the table in the back of the bar, the unnatural glint of his gold teeth pinging through Blue’s visor like a busted radar. “A senator, needs some help with a thorn in his side.”

“Assassination?” Blue asks, because he wants to know what he’s in for. Assassinations require double pay.

“Nah, just a kidnapping I think.” Keno shrugs. “Some stuck-up brat with more money than sense but a very protective older brother. Or cousin, maybe? I don’t know. They’re from the same planet as the Senator. She’s here doing…something, I guess? I don’t know and I don’t care.” He took a swig of his brew. “But he’s got enough money for you to deal with some prissy heiress for a few days while he waits for a ransom.”

Blue scowls under his buy’ce. Kidnappings were different from bail jumpers, traitors, or assassinations. Sure, he gets a multi-day expense instead of the normal flat fee, but it requires a more delicate hand than most other things. The only reason he charged his regular rates was because the multi-day expense of it all added up way past even the assassination double-fee. “Okay, so where am I meeting this guy?”

“Right here, of course,” Keno replies cheerfully.

“Oh, so he’s adapted well enough to hang out in the lower levels?” Blue asks, more conversationally than anything. They were close enough to the ground that he could feel his blood singing. The Taung may have claimed Mandalore as their homeworld after being chased off, but Coruscant was still special. Though with the buildings that were quickly overtaking the sky and the weird creatures popping up in the lower levels, that was dimming. It didn’t help that there was a _Jetiise_ temple here.

“Like a fish to water, or whatever,” Keno grunts. Then he perks up, looking over to the bar. “Oh, he’s here! I’ll send him over here and leave you two to the work.”

Keno disappears only to be replaced within minutes with a doughy looking Chalactan man. He was wearing the Lesser Mark of Illumination and golden rings on his fingers, but his clothes were plain.

“Keno speaks highly of you,” is the only greeting this senator gives.

Blue grunts. “Did he tell you my rates?”

The senator flutters his hand, as if waving the thought of money away. “It does not matter.”

Blue looks down at the rings, again. “Then you’re willing to part with collateral?”

The senator freezes for a second, enough even someone not trained would notice. Then he relaxes and, though his eyes seem pained in the dim light, he takes off two rings and places them in front of Blue. “A small price to pay.”

“Who do you want me to find?” Blue asks, phrasing it charitably.

The senator smiles wide and rubs his hands together. “I’ll give you her address, and she lives alone still so there is no worry there. She is Akshita Billaba, Princess of Chalacta. The close cousin of our king.”

A princess. This little politician that Keno was discounting is a princess. Sure, she could be an empty-headed heiress, still, but if she’s allowed to live alone while being a close cousin to the king, she knows enough to at least lengthen the kidnapping process. Plus, it was a lot more dangerous than snatching a simple heiress.

“You will take her somewhere and ransom her to the king from the comm code provided,” the senator continues, sliding a datapad across the table. “This has her address and all other important data, as well. So, you’ll do it?”

Ransom, which means a pretty high reward. He could refit his ship and still buy a decent amount of equipment for the forge back home. “I’ll do it.”

The Chalactan senator smiled again. “Wonderful.”

***

The address that the senator, Mayur, gave him isn’t as defenseless as Mayur seemed to assume. Princess Billaba might live alone, but her bloc has impressive security on the inside. The staff entrances are well guarded, and everyone is carefully checked.

Billaba lives near the top, though, and facing a more barren section of Coruscant. When her neighbors, above and besides, go out, Blue repels down from the top. Getting her out will be less difficult, thanks to the people of this bloc having their own speeders in a fingerprint locked garage.

When he enters through her bedroom, he can hear her talking in the sitting room. From the slight static and the lack of another heat signature on his HUD, it’s a comm call.

He waits and listens.

“Tam,” Billaba says, sounding exasperated, “I will not have the time until after Mayur is gone.”

Hm, maybe there’s a reason besides greed and annoyance for the senator to want Billaba out of the way.

A burst of static, then she replies, “Of course I’ll think about it. But for now, I simply do not have the time. For all I know, it will be another year.”

A lover? A friend? A co-conspirator in something? One never knows with politicians.

“I’ll see you soon,” Billaba promises, sounding just as exasperated as earlier. “Good _bye_ , Tam.”

The static stops and Billaba gets up, walking barefoot across thick carpet from what his mic picks up. She leans over a table, shuffling up flimsi.

Her back is to him.

One swing of the door and two steps forward, he has her by the arm.

But her back isn’t to him.

Billaba looks bored, dropping and ducking under his arm, tossing him off balance.

He has to let go quickly so she can’t pin him. He could get out of it, but he might bruise her. Hurting royalty sounds like a terrible idea. He likes his head where it is.

He backs up half a step, grabbing her hand when she moves to push him. Stepping forward again, he manages to catch her around the waist. She’s in a loose shift and a robe, which makes his hold much looser as she tries to squirm out of it.

Then she twists, one of her feet finding purchase on the edge of one of his moton’bur and her fingers curling along the edge of his buy’ce.

He falls against the wall as she forces him back, but he doesn’t fall any further. He snarls a bit and lifts her higher, turning them and slamming her against the wall.

And then he’s flying across the room, sliding down the opposite wall to the floor.

Billaba rolls her wrist, wincing, and stumbles towards him, breathing heavily but with fire in her dark eyes.

A kriffing Force user. A hidden one, if Mayur hadn’t mentioned it. And a smart one, which Mayur hadn’t even thought of.

“Mayur is a kriffing idiot,” Billaba says, snatching up a datapad before dropping herself onto his chest, pinning him rather effectively. She pokes at the datapad for a minute before nodding. “I knew he was desperate. Here.” She shoves the datapad into his hand. Through his visor, he can see the numbers.

Bank numbers, Mayur’s bank numbers.

The asshole is broke.

He looks up at her and nods, turning his mic on. “I really should request audits from clients.”

She’s caught off guard and breaks out into giggles.

It makes him remember she’s young, only three years younger than him, but she’s playing the political game with mastery if her Force use is hidden from even her countryman. “So, how do I get out of here peacefully, if I may?”

She studies him for a moment, smothering her giggles. “Well, Mayur still had some deniability if he hadn’t hired you. If you go off somewhere, I lose a witness and he likely gets a second chance at being a reputable member of Chalactan society. He’s done too much harm to our people and others for me to be willing to do that.”

This doesn’t sound like her having him arrested. This sounds like a business proposal. “So, you pay me to…what? Testify?”

She grins wickedly. “No, Mando’ad. I pay you to _act_.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Akshita's plan to work, she needs to be somewhere secure and safe. Unfortunately for Blue, that means the Jedi Temple is their best bet.

Akshita tucks her feet under the skirt of her nightshift, leaning against the side of her speeder. They’d decided to go with the Mandalorian bounty hunter’s initial plan of using her own vehicle and access to the private garage to get her out of the apartment bloc. She hadn’t gotten fully dressed, wanting to keep the pretense of a quick flight. However, she’d put a few sets of her chemise style tunics and bloomers, one blue and green set of _salwar kameez_ , one pair of leather sandals, and a pair of low heels into a bag. On top of all of her gold and jewels and papers, of course. She doesn’t trust Mayur farther than this bounty hunter could throw him.

“Turn left here,” she directs, pointing. They were going to hole up in the Jedi Temple, where her friend Tam Lin was Master of the Order. They’d be welcome to take sanctuary there and there were already several areas that were dark and dusty thanks to disuse over the last hundred years, ones she and her agemates had found when she lived in the Temple as a young teenager, that would be perfect sets for the ransom call and the call to Mayur.

The Mandalorian had only put up a minor protest about taking sanctuary with the Jedi. He obviously didn’t like it, the Mandalorian-Jedi wars still fresh in his people’s minds even a few generations after, but they wouldn’t be found out there, he could see that.

They pull into the furthermost speeder warehouse, off to the side of the Temple for diplomatic visitors to use. Her own speeder had been bought from them, so it would blend in well despite her modifications. A familiar Jedi Knight, Leia Pall, is standing nearby with her padawan.

Akshita shoots out of the speeder, leaving her bag to the bounty hunter. “Knight Pall!” she greets with a feral grin. This may require titles to show the seriousness of the situation, but she could never keep her plans fully away from her friends. “Could you call for Master Lin?”

Leia, a woman of quiet mischief, nods briefly, shuffling over to the desk where her comm system is.

The padawan stares in open awe at the Mandalorian’s armor, as he comes up with Akshita’s bag and keys.

He tilts his head at the young Jedi, then hands the keys and bag over to Akshita before disengaging his helmet.

He takes it off, revealing high cheekbones, thin eyes under chiseled brows with scars running through them, greenish stripes and tattoos across his skin, and hair slicked back into a ponytail on the top and shaved on the sides. “You want to see it?” he asks the padawan, holding out his helmet.

The padawan squeals and lets out a small thank you, taking the helmet carefully and mapping the contours as best as they can.

The Mandalorian’s thin lips quirk up in a smile and he shakes his head.

Akshita smiles brightly at him, making him duck.

“You’re the Princess’s bodyguard?” the padawan asks, when they return the helmet.

He hums. “Somewhat. Blue Vhett, at your service.” He gives the little Jedi a half bow, delighting them.

Hmm. Blue Vhett… A nickname?

“Padawan!” Leia calls. “I need you to escort Master Lin when he comes through.”

The padawan jolts off with a pleased thank-you-goodbye, leaving Leia to walk back over to them.

The Jedi raises an eyebrow at Blue. “So, how did this all happen?”

“Let’s just say, no one but my close friends should know we’re here,” Akshita says, crossing her arms. “It’s important that my location stays secret. I promise that you will get the full story with a nice beer once it’s all over.”

Leia shoots her a small, tired grin. “Good to see you, Princess.” She turns to Blue. “The Princess and I got into all sorts of trouble when I was a Padawan, usually with us dragging Master Lin along.”

Akshita shook her head. “We certainly made him prove his mastery.”

Blue raises an eyebrow. “Troublemakers, good to know.”

“I’d assure you we’ve left that behind us,” Akshita offers, “But I doubt false words would sway you.”

He snorts. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Good to know we’ll have someone else with sense,” Tam calls as he follows the padawan over to them. He looks like Leia roused him from his books. “Now, let’s get you too into the sanctum area so you can fill me in.”

Akshita waves to Leia and adjusts her grip on her bag, tossing her keys to the Knight. “Don’t crash her.”

Leia grumbles that she’s no fun.

***

Blue could really use a beer.

Master Tam Lin does have sense, but he also has obviously spent too much time with mischief-makers like Billaba and the Knight from the garage. He picks up her leaps in logic much better than Blue does, and _he’s_ used to dealing with supercommandos.

“So, we need to set up a way to leak the eventual call to Mayur to King Zhaya,” Master Lin says, nodding along to Billaba’s explanation as to why they’re in the Temple.

“And the Chancellor,” Billaba suddenly says, perking up from the couch she’s sprawled out on. “We should leak it to the Chancellor too!”

Master Lin looks like he could use a beer, too, at that.

“I really don’t think we need the Chancellor in on this,” Lin says sourly.

Billaba shakes her head. “No, she’ll be wondering where I am. I have two reports to send her, and we’re both supposed to be at a _very_ public luncheon tomorrow. If she’s panicking over the disappearance of a royal who is regularly visible to Coruscant’s high society, it confirms I’m gone to Mayur. Getting him in trouble with both Chalacta and the Republic means he has no chance of squirming out of this with his family’s connections.”

Lin really looks like he’s sucked on a lemon now.

Blue straightens up from where he’s been leaning against the wall near Billaba’s couch. “She’s right.”

Lin groans dramatically. “I hate it when you use logic, Akshita.” He gnashes his needle teeth at her. “Fine. _And_ the Chancellor.”

Billaba giggles. Kriffing baby chessmaster.

Lin turns his glare on Blue. “So, you need to make sure that she stays in here. We have two senators coming in tomorrow for meetings with the Council, and if she’s roaming around then her ‘kidnapping’ is either going to be aimed at us or dismissed in its entirety.”

Blue nods, but notices Billaba pouting.

“Tomorrow evening, we’ll stage the call. You’ll call King Zhaya first to demand ransom, then we’ll set up the leak to him and the Chancellor,” Lin finishes.

***

“You have a wild life,” Blue tells Akshita.

She grins up at him from the couch in her old apartments. “You haven’t even seen a scratch in the surface.”

He snorts. “Don’t think I want to.”

“Oh, where’s your sense of adventure,” she replies, sitting up and bracing herself against the back of the couch. When he raises an eyebrow, she shrugs. “Ah well. Want to see the guest room?”

“Aren’t all of the rooms guest rooms?” he asks, following her as she gets up and strolls deeper into the apartments.

“Well, it’s the set of rooms I used to live in when I stayed on Coruscant when I was recovering, before I moved here permanently. I still stay here sometimes when I get sick and don’t have anyone, or when an event here runs late, or when the Knights I’m friends with and I drink too late.” She shoots him another grin at that.

She opens up the guest room, mostly used by some of the aforementioned Knights. It’s spotless and bland, even drabber than the default Jedi rooms, though the mattress is much more comfortable. “Here we are.”

“Hm,” Blue grunts, stepping past her to set his helmet down on the desk. “Someone would think, just looking at it, that it’s empty. But there are memories here.” He knocks on the foot of the bedframe. “How many people usually fall asleep in here… It’s like a pile.”

“Psychometry?” she asks, before telling him, “Usually around three. The most, I think, was six. The other three piled on my bed with me. That was the day before I moved.” She smiles softly at the door across the hall.

“No, it’s more like a sense of movement, space memory, not seeing anything,” he confesses. “Maybe if I was more sensitive, it would have been that.”

She hums. She hadn’t taken him for a null, or even the average sensitivity of most species, and she was pleased to be proven right. Her friends would charitably call her smug.

“What about you?” he asks.

She steps forward, tapping a fingertip against his spaulder. “Patterns. How the force flows in things, how it usually does and how it usually will and the intersection of those things. How to manipulate those.”

Blue drops his head, looking her in the eye. She can trace somewhat recent Taung heritage in his features, maybe three generations back full, maybe further if ancestors married other mostly-Taung people. “An example?”

“Weather, for one,” she says, eyes following the greenish patterning on his brown skin that blends in with some of his tattoos. “Behavior, for another. The first is one I use the Force to manipulate if I have to. The second is much easier to toy with using only my own body and words.”

He hums and she can almost feel it in the air. “Useful. But you’re a lot more sensitive than I am. I’m sure you can do more.”

She has to keep herself from breathing in too sharply. “I can, though I’m not trained completely. Jedi less sensitive than I am are still much better at it than I am… I think it’s time I went to sleep. I will see you when the sky brightens again.” She backs up, taking in the furrow of his brow and the straightening of his back before she turns to go across the hall and open her own door.

“Sleep well, Princess,” Blue says, just as she’s shutting the door.

She shoots him a bright smile, shuts the door, and falls face first into her pillows to muffle her scream as she tries to keep the Force, all its past and present and future, at bay so she can just _process_ things like a normal sentient.

Blue is surprised, somewhat, when Aksh--the Princess is already up and twirling around the kitchen, making breakfast dressed in a tunic that looks quite a lot like her nightdress, but with a more general cut and a pair of bloomer style trousers underneath.

She looks beautiful, which is a thought that surprises him with its ferocity and tenacity. “Did you do something?” he asks her, dropping into a chair by the kitchen table. He’s not wearing any of his beskar’gam, right now, but that will change within a couple hours.

She huffs, glaring at him. “Oh, did _I_ do something?” she asks, setting down a plate of bread, jam, and eggs. Then she takes a deep breath and, after snatching up another plate, sits down primly across from him. “It’s the Force being…itself, I guess. I haven’t had this kind of experience with it before, only knowing that someone was my friend upon meeting them. Master Lin can probably explain it better, but the basics are that we, being more sensitive to the Force, experience all of our emotions that we ever have and ever will at the same time, and some situations and people can trigger certain ones to come to the surface of our consciousness.”

“I’d say that’s a good layman’s explanation,” Master Lin himself says, strolling through the front door to the rooms.

The Princess snorts at him, tossing a bit of her crust at him with the Force.

Blue looks between them. “That’s annoying.”

“It is,” the Princess agrees before sticking more of her crust in her mouth.

“It has it’s uses,” Master Lin defends, moving around them to grab food himself. “Still, you’ll have an easier time of it at first, Vhett, since you’re less sensitive to how the Force tosses us all around.”

The Princess looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “You got no sleep last night, did you?”

“I might have gone into a fugue state over a translation of an ancient Wookie epic, but otherwise I didn’t,” Master Lin admits.

Blue chuckles, slathering a thick slice of bread with a berry jam that didn’t smell too sour. “Are all Jedi crazy?”

“Yes,” the Princess says.

“Not all of us,” Master Lin says at the same time. Then he shakes his head at the Princess.

The Princess smirks.

“Tea?” Master Lin asks, somewhat desperately.

“Unless Jai stole it, it should be above the ice chest,” the Princess says. “If they did, I am allowed to toss them into a fountain.”

“Deal,” Lin grumbles, shoving himself up to root around in the cabinets above the ice chest. “There’s two bags left.”

Akshita makes a wounded sound. “It was full last time I was here!”

“You can still throw Jai in a fountain,” Lin assures her. “Vhett, do you want some?”

“Depends, what does it taste like?” he asks, looking up from eggs that are somehow cooked exactly how he likes them. He’s going to guess that’s Akshita’s pattern-seeing.

“Starberry and, uh,” Lin squints at the box. “It just says ‘bright’, Akshita.”

“Bright powder, abbreviated as bright, is a Chalactan mix of poi root, dried jubjub syrup, and fol petels. It’s very sweet. Starberry adds some acidity so it doesn’t all mix together,” Akshita—damnit, the Princess says. “Traditional Chalactan tea. It’s why Knight Jai Jali always steals it from me.”

“A Chalactan Jedi,” Lin clarifies for Blue. “Not common.”

“I’ll try it,” Blue says.

Lin uses the two bags, which are cut open and dropped into boiling water, to prepare a pot of the tea and then brings it over with three cups.

Blue takes one sip and nearly spits it out. Then, after a moment of sour it mellows into a powerfully sweet symphony of tastes, all distinct. He suddenly understands what the Princess meant. When he takes another sip, he gets none of the initial sour taste from the first. “This is terrifying,” he tells them.

Lin laughs. “I always think it’s too sweet.”

“Blasphemy,” the Princess hisses, holding her own cup covetously.

Blue feels his lips quirk into a smile.

“But it’s also highly caffeinated,” Lin adds, “So I drink it when I need it. I have some of my own that Akshita gifted me in my office.”

Blue does not express his relief at an energy boost after the night before.

The Princess takes a gratified, and somewhat smug, sip of her tea.

“So, I came by because I think we need to bring one of the librarians in to do the comm leaking,” Lin says once they’ve finished the pot and Blue can feel all of his nerves.

The Princess’s languid, post-tea body language stiffens. “Who?”

“Knight Casan,” Lin replies like he isn’t about to get his head ripped off.

“Cas can’t keep a secret to save his life!” the Princess says, somehow already halfway across the table, about to strangle the current Master of the Jedi Order. “His desire to spill is stronger than his will to live!”

Blue, in one fluid motion, stands and picks her up, keeping her from doing just that.

“We can use that to our advantage,” Lin promises. “Trust me, Akshita.”

Akshita slumps in Blue’s arms before patting him to let her down. He only does it when she shoots him a dirty look. “Fine. But I get to punch him in his snitch face later.”

Blue and Lin nearly choke.

“Snitch face?” Lin wheezes. “I love that, I’m using that.”

“Where do you come up with these things?” Blue asks, somewhat awed.

“The Force,” she replies, deadpan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo lovelies. 
> 
> Some brief notes, because it's not going to be addressed precisely. 
> 
> Leia Pall -- One of Akshita's agemates. She's a Jedi Ace but that means she often gets stuck with mechanics shifts like hanging out at the warehouse/garage. She's on her first Padawan, but they've only been together a couple of years.
> 
> Jai Jali -- Another of Akshita's agemates. They are a precursor to the Jedi Shadows who I'm having develop a bit later in the timeline in this story. They, Akshita, and several others of their generation are actually the ones who lead to the modern Jedi Shadows. Also on their first Padawan, but they've been together only about a year.
> 
> Casan -- The final of Akshita's agemates who will be in this "book" of Deception in Kyber. The other three really do love him, but he is a compulsive secret spiller. The more important it is to keep hidden, the more he wants to tell everyone. Repeated exposure to a secret, though, makes him less likely even if it is important. He doesn't have a Padawan at this point.
> 
> They're all about 23.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Akshita and Blue set the stage and the whole thing would have gone off without a hitch, but no one seems to have told Mayur how hiring a bounty hunter to kidnap someone actually works. Too bad for him about that.

After Lin leaves, Akshita is practically bouncing off the walls. She grumbles a few times about not being able to go anywhere, before spreading the papers and datapads she packed out on the kitchen table. Still she jerks back and forth between her work and fussing around the kitchen.

Blue ducks back into the guest room briefly to equip armor and check his comm messages. Mayur sent first a question if he had successfully kidnapped Akshita, which Blue snorts about since it’s more accurate to say that she kidnapped herself, and then a later one cheering because she didn’t appear at any of her morning events. There are also a couple of queries for other jobs.

When he comes back into the kitchen, he pauses to watch Akshita chew on the tip of her stylus while swiping through a datapad. It’s endearing. He shakes his head and tugs on one of her braids as he passes buy to raid the pantry for spices.

She huffs and turns around in her seat. “Was that necessary?”

Blue pulls out a bag of ticca masi spice and sniffs it. “I’d say so. What all were you supposed to be at this morning? Mayur is already delighted by your absence.”

A near growl comes out of her throat. “A committee for expat Chalactans was meeting today about the Chalacta Freedom festival, so he’d have been there, and then I was supposed to meet with a few senators who are in an informal committee preparing for the Naboo senator who is arriving in the new year.”

“You’ll be able to make up for that, somewhat, right?” he asks, setting the bag of spice out on the counter.

She hums. “Yes, I trust the expats to make their own decisions, they just like the flare of having me on their committee. And I can reschedule my meeting with the senators. Catching Mayur is more important, but it still upsets me.” She huffs and rubs her temples. “Throwing my life into chaos because he couldn’t stop himself from betting it all.”

He walks over to lean on the back of her chair. “It’ll be over soon.”

She snorts, looking up at him. “He’ll be caught, but then there is the arraignment, for Coruscant and for Chalacta, and then the trial, possibly on both planets, and then the sentencing.”

He has the urge to reach down and smooth away the worries from her face, standing in a kitchen much bigger yet even simpler than the one they’re in. Instead, he pushes off from the back of her chair to pull out the forest fowl Lin apparently brought by before Blue had ever even come out. “Lunch, Princess?”

She sighs, “If you don’t mind.”

The corners of his lips quirk up. “Not at all.”

***

Blue cooks lunch while Akshita works on the reports she’ll send the Chancellor as soon as all of this is over with and pokes at her budget to see if she could afford a long term bodyguard. Partially it’s because she kind of needs a bodyguard at some of the events in the next year, partially it’s because with the season change coming up she’ll have a few days out of commission, and partially it’s because she really does just want to keep Blue close. That’s the irrational part, though, the part screaming through time for something that might never happen if it keeps its volume, something that might happen years from now if the stars twist them together again.

But she needs a bodyguard at some of the events coming up. She doesn’t want to have to drag herself to the Temple to be an invalid. She’d like to just stay home to be an invalid, to be quite honest.

She has plenty of room in her budget, when she really looks at it. She has room enough in her budget for a militia, really. She’s too paranoid about saving, sometimes.

Blue brings her out of her scowling at numbers by setting a plate of forest fowl ticca masi in front of her.

“You think too much,” he says, gently knocking his knuckles against her temple, setting down his own plate.

“Probably,” she admits, “Though that’s because in public I have to appear to not be thinking at all.”

Blue rolls his eyes at her. “You have a wild life.”

She rolls her eyes right back and turns to her food, letting it melt in her mouth and trying to figure out how to broach the question of him taking a job as a long-term bodyguard with her.

“So, I’m calculating how much I’m paying you,” she eventually says, “Based on the rates you gave me when I was packing.”

“You were actually paying attention?” he teases.

She smiles. “I can multitask. Anyways, looking at the figures, I could actually afford to take you on as a bodyguard regularly.”

Blue’s eyebrows go up. “What?”

“I have six major events in the next four months, so far, and at least fourteen minor ones that are still public enough it would be good to have someone else around,” she explains. “And I am always more at risk when I’m ill. Of course, despite being on my payroll long term, you would be able to take any other jobs that don’t conflict. …Though if that won’t work, I should freely take any recommendations for others you know and trust in the business.” She carefully did not look at him. She’d be getting her hopes up too much.

He puts down his fork. “This is a very round about way to tell me you want me to stay.”

She snorts, looking up at the blank look on his face. “Telling you I want you to stay may be accurate, but so is telling you that I have a need you could fill, a job you qualify for. Those are not mutually exclusive, and putting my wants ahead of my needs, especially in putting all of that on another person, is extremely irresponsible behavior for me to start dabbling in.”

He blinks slowly at her. “Your speech gets much more diplomatic when you’re nervous.”

“Not strictly true,” she retorts, prodding at her food. “I also get more diplomatic when negotiating.”

“So, which is this?” he asks, armored hand reaching across the table to still her hand.

She glances up, breath catching in her throat at the strength of the Force moving around them. “Oh, both. But I’ll admit, most of it is nervousness.”

He hums, keeping the silence between them floating for a moment. “How long do we have before our act?”

She blinks, not expecting that question. “Seven more hours before we head downstairs, I believe. Our lunch has been rather early.”

“Good,” he says, standing up and pulling her with him, bringing her close and dipping his head down so close that their foreheads nearly touched. “Would you like me to serve you, Princess?”

“Mr. Vhett,” she breathes, “I would be honored.”

***

Akshita is fire in his hands, clinging to his waist a strength unexpected for her fragility. And she is fragile, molten glass that he’s pressing up against the wall in her room. He’s still mostly in beskar’gam, keeping her steady with a knee under her. As much as he’d love to be touching under the _chemise chalac_ , as she had told him it was called earlier, he’s keeping his hands on the wall.

Her hands are skirting under the edges of the beskar plates, finding spots under the thinner fabric of his t’ashi’gam that make him press harder into her kisses, light and air in the press of two bodies and wet of tongues.

Hod Ha’ran must have set them on the path to each other, pleased with the new wave in devotion by the exiles enough to lend his fickle fortune in this way. To bless a Mando’ad with beauty and fire and wit and words.

Had his parents prayed he would be happy, before he was born?

Akshita rakes her long, rounded nails through his hair, breaking the kiss to breath deeply and shudder as Blue’s thigh digs between hers. In the middle of a long intake of breath, clinging to him by the collar of his ghet’bur, she cuts herself off with a high keen, nearly a whine, and she buries her nose under his chin, shaking apart and back together in his arms.

He wraps her up and carries her over to her bed, laying her on it. He’d like to go further, to touch her, kiss her, everywhere. He’d like to pin her to the bed and kark her, to lay back while she takes control, ties him up with silk and rides him like a stolen speeder. For her pleasure, for his pleasure, he’s not sure where that line exists.

He shouldn’t have even gotten this involved, but the Force has other plans, laughing at them like a nosey ba’vodu. Still, he gets the feeling that going that far, getting that involved, would have ramifications at this point. She’s a princess _and_ she’s her cousin’s heir until he has children, from the cursory research he’d done last night.

She seems to know that, judging by the way she clings to his sleeve and stares at the ceiling with a look of regret.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the words stumbling out.

She smiles at him, soft and dreamy yet still equally regretful. “Maybe one day we won’t be.”

He leans down and kisses her, chaste but slow, on her lips. When he straightens back up, needing to take a shower in his own room, he says, “I’ll take the job.”

Her eyes widen, obviously surprised. “You will?”

He smirks at her. “I’d be honored.”

She throws a pillow at him.

***

The day after that…interruption…progresses like the backstage of the playhouse when Akshita’s friend Brim, the Stellè Primé of Corter Company, is prepping with the younger dancers.

There’s deep amusement and teasing, because Leia and her Padawan, Dix, are there along with Jai, who suspected Akshita’s presence when Master Lin complained about the lack of tea, and their Padawan Rei, and the much mocked Cas who is being pulled in on all of this only through promising that he’s getting to be the one to make it all come out.

But there’s also seriousness. Leia and Dix come to compare security stills taken before they were wiped to Akshita’s clothing, picking out what she was wearing. Jai uses their weird expertise to add appropriate blooming bruises with makeup that makes Blue shudder, which earns him their ardent approval in this franchise.

Akshita gives Cas a list of everything she suspects Mayur of doing so he spends his time searching for evidence to refute or prove those things and compiling that in datapads for both Zhaya and the Chancellor.

Blue and Master Lin spend their time trying to come up with the phrasing least likely to make Zhaya declare war on Mandalore and keep listening in when it becomes clear that this would-be-ransomer not only hasn’t hung up but has also called his employer. During this time, Cas will also patch in the Chancellor.

Jai decides that, while Cas patches the Chancellor in, they and Rei will take the two datapads to the Chancellor and leave the impression that Akshita wanted them to be given to her and Zhaya if anything happened to her. Leia and Dix will be their ride.

“Well, everyone,” Akshita says, adjusting her robe, “Let’s get to our places.”

Brim would be proud of her. She might actually request behind the scenes holos of this whole operation, which Jai, Leia, and Cas understand immediately when Akshita mentions them. Blue and Master Lin, predictably, are horrified.

Blue will understand when he meets Brim.

Jai is in charge of compiling those photos, of Akshita’s makeup process, of them all grinning around a stoic-looking, helmeted Blue and completely done Master Lin, of their dramatic antics on their way down to the lower levels, avoiding just about everyone.

“After this, she’ll be allowed to roam in Council areas, so you won’t have to worry too much about your sanity,” she hears Master Lin assure Blue.

“No,” he grumbles back through his mic, “I won’t have to worry about her sanity. Keeping her out of trouble in a wider area doubles my issues.”

Master Lin laughs.

In the dusty, low light of the hallway they’ve decided to appropriate as some dungeon-cell-basement setup, they make a big show of putting the bounty cuffs on Akshita and her posing ridiculously before actually curling up into a prone, unconscious-but-still-obviously-breathing position.

The hall goes silent.

“Too much?” she asks, cracking open an eye.

“Yes,” all of them chorus at once. Still, Jai and Dix dust her up with some rust and dirt so it looks like she’s bled and been dragged about in her gown and robe. They also add some fake cuts to her feet, like she’s been forced to walk on sharp stones.

“Tingley,” she says, completely deadpan in a way that makes Blue have to turn off his mic because he’s laughing.

Cas sets up the system to transfer through the different callers and sets in their numbers.

“From the top, everyone,” Jai mutters before taking the datapads and leading everyone but Cas and Master Lin, who stand well in front of Blue and his comm system even with the feed aimed back at him and Akshita.

She forces her breathing to be both regular and labored.

With a nod from Blue, Cas sets the first call in motion.

***

Even through the blue of the comm feed, further dimmed by his visor, Blue can’t help but take in the features of King Zhaya that are familiar from watching Akshita’s face.

He wears two marks, too, but they’re flat and dark. He’ll have to ask Akshita about those later. His dark hair is braided back to interlace with loops of flowers.

He looks furious.

“What…” The king’s eyes glance to the side of the camera where, considering screen layout, Akshita is lying. “What is this, Mando’ad?”

It’s nice to know that it isn’t just a quirk of Akshita to use the Mando’a word for his people. “I’ve been hired to hold the Princess-Adept Akshita Billaba of Chalacta and deliver this message to you. She will be returned to you for a sum, in credits or equivalent worth in Chalactan gold, of 330 qui, delivered to the Muun Banking Clan headquarters on Coruscant.”

Zhaya is quiet for a long moment, then he speaks with a crack in his voice. “And she’ll be alive.”

“By my honor, she will,” Blue says quietly. He looks up at Cas and nods. In any normal case, it would be a sign of a call being cut.

He takes a bowl of water from Master Lin and takes it over to Akshita, who is apparently pained by the child of the stone floor, at least. She gratefully takes a sip.

“What is going--,” a new voice crackles of the comm. The Chancellor, Blue assumes. “Akshita?”

Blue takes the bowl of water and walks it back to Master Lin, still behind the video. He holds up a finger to approximately where his lips are, flinching as he hears Akshita cough. Still, he lowers his finger and nods again to Cas.

The videos for King Zhaya and the Chancellor dim and separate, and are muted if Cas is doing his job, filled instead with Mayur’s.

“Senator,” he greets with a curt dip of his helmet.

“Ah, Vhett. I assume the ransom demand is delivered. Good job. I’ll have your money sent to you upon delivery.”

“My rates still add up as the days go by,” he reminds Mayur.

“Well that’s easy enough, just kill her.”

Blue’s blood runs cold. Even dimmed, he can tell King Zhaya and the Chancellor are confused and infuriated. “That wasn’t our agreement,” Blue says.

“Well, but it’s no big deal to change, is it?” Mayur asks, huffing.

Blue wonders if Cas is having Mayur’s video broadcast to the others. “And if there is no ransom?”

Mayur stutters before saying, “There will be a ransom.”

Not: you will be paid. No. Blue smirks under his helmet. “Your collateral doesn’t cover an assassination on top of what I’ve already done. And it won’t cover another day, either.”

Mayur visibly pales in even the blue of the comm video. “So you’ll take me for everything?”

“I’m sure Keno can help you out,” Blue says, even though he recognized the account number that Mayur’s outgoing funds was going to. “As it is, I want to be paid before the ransom comes in, if I’m going to be assassinating her. I want to get well away from this husk of a planet.”

Mayur’s obviously frustrated. “I’ll call you tonight with the information.”

He inclines his head again and taps his gauntlet, the sign for Cas to cut all of the feeds.

He takes off his helmet and goes to help Akshita up and out of the cuffs. “Think that will be enough?”

Akshita lets out a flurry of coughs, swaying against him. “Between what Cas found and that, I can only hope they won’t kill him and steal my ability to gloat by being at the trials from me.”

Then her knees buckle and her head lolls into his chest, lips parted and lids fluttering shut.

“Akshita?” he asks, terror gripping him.

“Akshita!” Cas and Lin call at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Chalacta Freedom Festival is a really fun bit of worldbuilding I did that I haven't actually touched on in anything besides that existence, even though it was some of my first worldbuilding with Akshita's cultural morals. Basically, Chalactans were once enslaved people, probably back in the early Old Republic, and are vicious defenders of rights and freers of slaves into the Modern. The Freedom Festival celebrates a revolt that led to the people who make up Chalactan's initial population being freed and setting up their own government. Why a monarchy? I have more thoughts than can be put down in notes but just know it boils down to it being a mostly religious position. 
> 
> Yes ticca masi is space tikka masala. I like putting my favorite things in here.
> 
> T'ashi'gam! I made this word. Second skin/other skin. T'ad, two; ashi, other; gam, skin. Refers to armorweave coveralls under the beskar'gam but over any thermal regulating suit. I've seen people call what Jango Fett wears in the Prequels a flight suit, which is technically right, but I felt like it probably has a more technical term and place in a Mando'ad's armor.
> 
> Hod Ha'ran, those of you who have read By Writ and Lips will know, is the Mandalorian trickster god. I gave him the additon of being a god of luck, in this, and a patron of the first Mandalorian exiles. 
> 
> Stellè Primé and Corter Company -- I have not a clue if Brim will actually appear "on stage" in any of Deception in Kyber, but I wanted a solid reason for Akshita to use my bullshit theatre background in her way of thinking. Basically, Corter Company is a Ball Classique (something I actually came up with in a different WIP that's been discarded) aka our ballet company, stationed on Coruscant. Stellè Primé means first star because this is space ballet.
> 
> 330 qui -- qui are my take on what probably became the quipipi of Hutt space. However they're closer to those coins certain governments make that are worth like fifty dollars. They're one of the standards of galactic commerce because _everyone_ accepts the solid hunks of metal. The Second Republic is too young at this point to have a credits system that goes very far.
> 
> Did you all know that I wasn't sure what kind of name to give the Chancellor in this whole mess? I recently (like a week ago, long after The Mayur Affair was finished) decided to steal a name or two from Legends. Me, writing canon compliant historical fanfiction: You can't prove it didn't happen.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, they wait; Akshita and Blue share pieces of what make them up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Discussion of child abuse, child neglect, and psychosis-induced harm to a child. Oh and execution. That too.

Akshita wakes up in her bed in the Temple, legs tingling and head aching. This shouldn’t have happened… The stress of this shouldn’t have made her act up so much. Sure, she’s only on the edge. Likely forced bedrest, which makes her huff.

“Princess? You awake?” Blue’s voice comes from next to her bed, exhausted.

She struggles a moment but eventually gets onto her side so she can pry open her eyes to stare at him. He’s dragged one of the chairs from the kitchen in and most of his armor is off, though she notices it’s piled by her door. She reaches out and takes his hand. “Sorry about that,” she croaks.

The only light in the room is her oil lamp, on the table Blue’s taken his vigil next to. The gauzy curtains, ridiculous gifts from Leia and Jai, are swept around the side where the windows are. Only the deep, long light of dusk reaches through them.

“How long was I out?” she asks, wiggling her toes under the sheets.

“Only about two hours,” Blue answers, relief palpable. “Knight Pall and Knight Jali assured us that the datapads were delivered. They’re worried about you.”

She reaches out to clasp his hand, slumping into her blankets. “Lay with me?”

He huffs and extracts himself for a moment before stripping off the rough material of his under-armor coveralls and kicking off his boots. Below the coveralls are skin-tight, temperature regulating blacks. She’s seen it on divers, before, but she can understand why he’d wear it under all his armor layers. He does, though, crawl under the blankets with her, letting her curl against him and in fact nearly covering her. Protective.

She studies his face in the dim amber light under the curtains, reaching up to trace tattoos and stripes of disruptive coloration alike.

“Don’t see anyone like me, hmm?” he asks, tone teasing.

“I suspect that’s purposeful,” she retorts, though her voice is a whisper. “Every Mandalorian I’ve actually seen on Coruscant has been those of the Neo-Mando’ade. They’re all human, only human.”

Blue scoffs but says no more for a while. “This is what happens when you get sick, isn’t it?”

Akshita tucks her nose into the crook of his neck. “It’s a warning sign that I’m overdoing it and will get sick if I continue. When I’m just sick, I assure you it’s much less dramatic.”

“So, what happened, what went wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “The stress is a little more than usual, yes, but it usually takes weeks of heightened stress to make this happen. Even being on the stone for a while shouldn’t have tipped me over so fast. It’s when my body chemistry is drastically different that these things happen…”

He pulls back from her then presses their foreheads together, forcing her to breathe with him. “What about us? Add in that we are in close quarters, with emotional responses from our entire lives being crammed into each second…”

She breaths out in exasperation. “Oh.”

“Good things, good emotions, can still shake us up, cyar’ika,” he tells her, swiping a finger under her eye. “I’m sorry to deliver such distress.”

Oh, she’s…She’s crying. Frustration, she knows. A habit she never got rid of, since it’s too easy to trick people with it. “Blue…”

“Viin,” he says, a gentle correction. “When it’s us, you can call me by my name.”

“Viin?” she asks, hands curling up in the silky rough fabric of his shirt.

“Mando’a. The Basic translation is blue,” he tells her, smirking.

She huffs out a little laugh, then curls into him and lets herself fall into true sleep.

***

Blue is confused by Akshita’s shock and delight the next morning when she can walk normally.

“Usually I’m on bedrest for a few days after something like this,” she admits, dancing and swirling in the fresh nightgown he’d helped Knight Jali put her in after she hadn’t woken by the time the two Knights had returned from their delivery. “I still might get dragged to the Healing Halls, but it seems to have blown over.”

He catches her in his arms, swinging her around and up to hear her delighted laughter. “You should still take it easy.”

She looks down and grins, then kisses him. “I’m sure you and Jai and Leia will team up to make my life terribly boring.”

A knock comes on the door to the apartments, surprising them.

“Master Lin,” Akshita groans, slumping dramatically against him with a put-on pout.

Blue sets her down on the couch and goes to let Lin in. The Master of the Order looks frazzled, but self-satisfied.

“The Chancellor has already called for Senator Mayur’s arrest. King Zhaya has departed Chalacta for Coruscant. Vhett, you’re currently wanted across the entire Republic space, alive thankfully. We’ve spread Princess Billaba’s location to the other Masters of the Council and the rest of her friends from childhood. The head archivist has also been alerted to your presences. Until King Zhaya arrives, you cannot leave the inner levels of the Temple, Akshita. And even with people aware of you, Vhett, you should not wear your beskar’gam in the Temple now,” he tells them.

Blue nods along. “Easy enough. If I tie my t’ashi’gam around my waist, I can look like a mechanic. If Knight Pall and Padawan Dix are in our entourage, the look is solidified in everyone’s mind.”

“I just love when you say things that imply you’ve had to flee people who know what your armor looks like before,” Lin says, deadpan.

“Oh no, more referring to getting in places that would question a Mando’ad in full beskar’gam,” Blue retorts, grin sharp. “I don’t usually leave people who know what my armor looks like, connected to a job.”

“As interesting as it might be to learn the assassinations you’ve pulled off, I probably shouldn’t,” Lin says.

Akshita snickers.

“And you, young lady, will be seeing a healer,” he says, turning on her. “After yesterday, you need a thorough check.”

Akshita stops snickering and instead turns to her time-honored pouting. Blue’s somewhat amazed that it’s fake, since it doesn’t look it until you notice how often and when she does it.

Lin shakes his head. “Good luck keeping her from going wild, Mister Vhett. Knight Pall and Knight Jali should be here soon, along with the healer, so you have help keeping her from bolting.”

***

Leia and Jai bring Master Trase, an Ongree Healer who has a tendency to treat Akshita like a child, to check on her.

It’s not a surprise, she reasons with herself while Master Trase begins to take her vitals. Master Trase was the Jedi who handled her the most when she first came to Coruscant. Sure, it was to keep her safe diplomatically.

But they also needed to figure out how much of a toll the poison had taken.

Master Trase is someone she looks at fondly, the closest sentient to a father she has. Really, it’s their shared past that makes the old Ongree coddle her. It’s just also that Akshita has been legally an adult that entire time, thirteen at the beginning or not.

Master Trase tuts over her blood pressure, her heart rates, the way electricity runs down her legs to measure muscle reactivity… But he compliments her quick recovery, her restraint in picking back up her work, and her choice in bodyguard, of all things.

“You’re keeping her settled, keeping her from doing things,” Master Trase tells Blue, gravelly voice filled with approval and mirth. “I can tell you two are having trouble from doing anything…” Akshita throws a pillow at the old Ongree, which he easily dodges with some help from the Force. “But I’m afraid her body chemistry is too unstable to use her usual safety methods. For now, she needs one day of rest. No mischief, only enough work to keep her from killing all of you. She should not cook and she should not leave the apartments barring an emergency.”

Akshita scoffs and curls into herself but doesn’t stoop to not saying goodbye to him.

Leia and Jai are snickering until Blue looks between all three of them and asks, “Do I ask about the body chemistry finally or do I ask about the ‘usual safety methods’?”

Jai shifts uncomfortably as the second option, Leia at the first.

“When I need to gather information from certain sources, I take precautions,” Akshita says carefully. Then, going full force, she says, “So many idiots pour everything out to courtesans.”

Blue nods, passing no judgement, which fills her with relief. “So, the body chemistry thing.”

“You haven’t told him yet?” Leia asks. “I thought you were hiring him on full time.”

“I was going to wait until all of this was over,” Akshita protests. “I told him I get sick.”

She takes a deep breath. “My parents didn’t really…care about me.”

“Understatement,” Jai scoffs.

“They often left me to my aunt, who was a sweet woman but…unstable. She was my father’s sister, married to my mother’s brother. She was King Zhaya’s mother. She always wanted a daughter, but something happened after my grandparents refused to let her and my uncle raise Zhaya. It killed my uncle, after all. So, whenever I was not at the Temple of Illumination, studying to be an Adept, I’d be with her. And she poisoned me, repeatedly.”

Blue flinches, clutching the wall and nearly folding in on himself. “What?”

“She wanted to protect me, by making me immune. My parents found out but did nothing. They told me how good it was that the queen mother to be taking an interest in my future. They made sure I was always with her when I was not with the Adepts. I think they were hoping she’d overdo it. But she didn’t. I’m effectively immune to every poison in the galaxy. It wasn’t until I reached enlightenment and became an Adept that it came out.

“I was considered, from that point on, an adult in the eyes of Chalactan law. But provisions had been made for Adepts like me to have political caretakers until we reach the normal Chalactan age of adulthood. Mostly teaching us how to take care of our own interests… Well, mine wasn’t from the family. And he discovered what my aunt had done. You see, the poisons damaged my legs and changed the balance of my body chemistry. Whenever there is a major change to that balance, I become ill. The worst of it is my inability to walk, but I have a few other issues that are much more minor and are gone only a few days into each episode. But, the poisoning was brought to the attention of my cousin and the council. My parents, for their part, were arrested. They’re still imprisoned.

“When someone was finally able to make my aunt understand what she had done, after a year of house arrest and me being on Coruscant, she demanded they prosecute her to the fullest extent… She was found guilty of endangering a royal child and executed.”

It’s only as she talks about her aunt’s clarity and execution that Akshita feels tears start to stream down her face.

“She and Zhaya were the only ones who _cared_ ,” she says, her voice breaking, “But she did not know how to care correctly.”

Distantly, she hears Leia say, “She regularly sees a mind healer about these things… She was a lot worse about it when we were younger.”

“So…” Blue says after a long moment. “What can upset the balance in your body?”

She sniffs, grateful he’s not going to try and talk to her about…about the why. “The weather changes do a lot, but long space trips or changes in planet or atmosphere in general illicit similar reactions. Hormone imbalances make me unsteady, but metabolize faster and so don’t cause me to be bedridden for days on end.”

Things turn to lighter topics for a while before Jai decides to drag Leia out to get them all some food from the Chalactan district. Then, only then, does Blue ask, half joking, “Anything else I should know about your family?”

Akshita falls back against the sofa to look him in the eye. “My cousin is very protective of me, since, before he married, we were all each other had. And because he feels responsible for what happened. And because he cannot have my parents killed… And, I suppose, because we do consider each other more like a brother and a sister.”

Blue studies her for a long moment, then nods. “Alright, good to know before I actually meet him in person.” Then he sits next to her and helps her organize her papers and datapads and clear off space when Jai and Leia return with both food and padawans.

***

Blue lets Akshita bribe him to sleep beside her again, since she’s been visibly antsy staying in the apartments on Healer Trase’s orders. Still, even curled into his chest, she is buzzing with nervous energy. He wraps a long lock of her freed hair, which Leia brushed out after dinner, around his fingers. It’s smooth and watery, with a little wave all along it that makes him suspect it’s from one of her braids instead of the rest of her strange, pillow-y updo.

“I grew up on a planet called Concord Dawn, in the Mandalorian Sector. It’s a planet of farmers, but some of us… Those of us who managed to escape being exiled on Concordia, one of Manda’yaim’s moons, spread out through the sector. My clan, my family, went to Concord Dawn. We fit pretty well there, actually. One of my buire, the one you might call my father I guess, is actually from Concord Dawn. He married into the clan. My other buir, my mother, is a goran, a smith in times of peace and an armorer in times of war. She taught me.”

Akshita doesn’t say anything, but she settles against him.

“I grew up around the forge,” he continues. “Sure, I helped with the farming, but buir always says that beskar is in my blood. There are some exiles who have started pulling together a bounty hunting group, keeping our ways alive even though the ‘New Mandalorians’ want them to shut up and die. I work with them now, a lot. I’m saving up to build a farm and forge of my own, so my kih’vode can squabble over our buire’s. It’ll be a good base for the group, too.”

“What’s the group called?” Akshita asks, voice low with sleep.

“Kyr’stad, Death Watch,” he tells her. “We stand watch to prevent the death of our people. We’ve got some idiots who are really into the old crusades and think we should bring those back, or attack the New Mandalorian government, but they’re the minority. They’re all too much loose blasters to make a strong Mand’alor.” He chuckles at that and curls his arms around her. “I hope it stays that way.”

“Mm.” She presses her nose into his neck. “I’d like to meet them. And your parents, you’re boore—I didn’t pronounce that right.”

“I’ll teach you,” he promises.

Night drifts into their minds, filling their sleep with soft dreams of a simple future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cookies if you noticed the different vocabulary that Akshita and Blue use when they're referring to each other, just like the names from last chapter, and how it changes. I get a kick out of the development you can show like that.
> 
> Akshita may never have acted on stage, but she certainly could with her talents. Well, if not for the results of Tragic Backstory™.
> 
> Ah yes, my thing about the Mandalorian Traditionalists and their roots. When Jaster Mereel was elected Mand'alor, two groups split. One became the terrorist group Kyr'Stad, while Jaster's became the Haat Mando'ade. I'm reasonably sure Kyr'Stad was the original name, but Jaster wouldn't want to be associated with terrorists who wouldn't willingly change their name.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're young enough to go in and out of childhood. Sometimes, though, the Force conspires to make all joys into sorrows.

Waking up next to Akshita puts Blue in another time, another place. For a moment when he wakes up, with her languid and sleepy in his arms, it’s the pale orange light of Concord Dawn. The sheets are white linen, with only a few jewel toned pillows tossed around them, an open world all their own.

Then the pale orange is the deep amber of the sunrise through her bed curtains. The jewel toned bedding makes their little space feel warm and close and theirs in the crush of Coruscant.

Still, the difference doesn’t jar him out of the soft, relaxed moments right after sleep.

“Morning,” Akshita greets him, arms wrapping around his neck.

“Mhmm,” he grunts, pressing his face into the silky crush of her hair against the pillows. He smiles a little as she laughs.

“Silly man,” she hums, drumming fingers against the back of his neck. She sighs. “We should get up.”

“We should,” he agrees, not moving except to slip his hand under her nightgown. He’s chasing a feeling, really. A guess verified by the giggle that rings in his ear.

She lets go of him to push at his arm. “Stop that,” she laughs.

“Stop what?” he asks, nosing under her ear to kiss high on her neck.

Another giggle. “Tickling me! Blue--.”

“Viin,” he corrects, pulling back so he can look at her.

“Viin,” she echoes, voice low as she looks up at him through thick lashes.

The next moment he’s flat on his back while she straddles him, pressing his arms to his chest by leaning fully against them. “Kriff,” he mutters, forcing himself to relax after her quick movement. On one hand, someone who can do that to him is dangerous. On the other hand, the two of them were barely going—and that was incredibly attractive.

For her part, Akshita looks incredibly satisfied with her position. “Not,” she says, rolling her hips and making him groan, “What I meant when I said we should get up.”

“No, I don’t suppose it was,” he replies, content to stare up her.

She catches on to that sentiment and smirks at him. “Don’t be too entranced, I really have to get you off-balance to do anything like this.”

“Second time you’ve done it,” he reminds her.

“If it hadn’t been for my Force sensitivity being an unknown, you would have easily taken me the first time,” she tells him, letting up off his arms to sit up and stretch.

He watches her, letting his arms fall away from his chest. “I don’t know about _easily_.”

She rubs her wrist, which gives him a lurch of concern, and says, “Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t have remembered it a few years from now. As decent as my reflexes are, as hard as I may have fought, I doubt I would have made much of an impact. Not with your armor, certainly not with your experience.”

He pushes himself up and rests his hands on her hips. “So how do we make it so you won’t look at that like it’s your fault?”

She blinks a few times, surprised. “What?”

“Do you want me to help you train? Do you want me to show you all the points of my armor you could use to take me, or any other Mandalorian, out? What will make you feel better?” he clarifies. “It won’t matter if you can’t walk for a week after if you’ve killed your opponent.”

“Viin,” she snaps, terror in her eyes. “No, I don’t…”

He stops, at that, instead pressing his forehead against hers. “It doesn’t matter if you are safe if you don’t feel safe,” he tells her. “I can help with that.”

“Maybe… Maybe another time,” she tells him, eyes squeezing shut.

He nods. “Alright… We should get up.”

She breaths out for a long moment. “We should.”

***

Breakfast is simple, though the two of them do manage to mentally agree to dump chili powder and garlic in the eggs before curling up on the couch. Afterwards, when Blue has his coveralls on the way he planned and is waiting for Leia, Jai, and Cas to show up, Akshita goes to change.

The Jedi usually frown on her frivolous use of the Force, but with the elaborate Chalactan hairstyles, even Jai usually sneaks it in to keep up with everyone else’s routines. With Akshita’s bouffant bun sculpted carefully around the four braids she wears as a nod to her fellow expats, it’s an even longer process without help from the Force.

With the Force, she’s able to section out and braid the quartet of braids while she pulls on a tunic, then twist the rest of her into the fluffy bouffant style and tuck all of it into a perfect bun with only a few pins and a ribbon before she puts on a pair of bloomer trousers and ties a matching ribbon around the waist of her tunic. Today the ribbons are green and the tunic and bloomers are blue, darker and duskier than she’d usually wear on Coruscant, but still lighter than she’d wear on Chalacta.

She doesn’t think she’s ever worn them before, actually, doesn’t know why she bought them or why she threw them in her bag. Looking in the mirror, she sees why she put it on, though. It makes a pattern, keeping the colors on the armor that Blue isn’t wearing today.

The shock of it, of the Force’s influence sends her to sit on the edge of the bed.

What are they doing?

Do they even have a choice in this?

She looks at him and loves him, the little bit of love that’s already blooming from the way they play off each other and the ocean of love pouring into them from their shared future.

No, if she’s thinking this through and she still feels that love, they have a choice. If they didn’t, why would the Force make her think about it? Why would it chance her changing her mind and tearing away from the path before them?

She stands back up, smoothing down the skirt of her tunic and making sure it’s not caught or tucked in anywhere, then goes barefoot back to the living room.

Blue looks up at her from the couch, where he’s studying a datapad of her upcoming events. There is a beat of silence, of the same questioning she just experienced, then he sets the datapad down and opens his arms so she can curl into his side and cling to him.

“I love you,” she does not say. No, instead, she says, “Teach me how to say that word, the word for your parents.”

***

Pall, Blue learns in the afternoon, is the smartest out of all four of the agemates. As much as he’d like to defend Akshita’s brilliance, because she is brilliant whether he likes it or not (but thankfully he does quite like it), Pall is unfalteringly smart.

Or maybe it’s just that she’s the most likely to think out the consequences of the schemes the quartet comes up with.

“Okay so if Master Lin finds out about this, he’s throwing us in the bowels of the Temple and telling us we can only come out if one of us is dead,” Pall says.

He doesn’t think they’re _likely_ consequences, but they’re still possible consequences. Blue’s actually pretty sure Lin would throw himself off the top of the Temple in desperation first.

Then again, if anyone would survive that, it’s probably Lin.

“Nah,” Casan says, much more relaxed now that they’re not detailing something insanely secret. Apparently the more dire a secret, the more compelled he feels to tell about it. It’s pathological, according to Jali. “Just put Akshita in front, he’ll fold.”

Also, apparently hiding Akshita in the Temple is not that dire a secret that makes Casan want to scream it from the windows. Blue has a feeling that’s because of how long, off and on, she’s spent in hiding here.

“Have any of you,” he says, slowly and carefully, “Thought about how this could possibly destroy the support structures of this area of the Temple, causing a total collapse and hundreds of deaths?”

They all stare at him.

“Okay,” Akshita says, “Apparently we should have had someone like Blue around this entire time. How would you suggest we do this, then?”

They want to flood an entire floor of the Temple. Because Akshita is chaos incarnate, Jali is constantly trying to one-up both her and Pall in terms of ridiculousness, Pall is an adrenaline junkie, and Casan is a pathological drama instigator.

Blue rubs his temples. He’s pretty sure he’s not going to convince them to not flood an entire floor of the Temple. Unless.

“Didn’t Master Lin say that the Council Masters know you’re here?” he asks Akshita.

She lights up like a supernova. It’s utterly terrifying. And kind of sexy. He’s very glad he’s not about to be the target of this horrifically terrible idea.

“Glitter,” Pall says before Akshita can say anything. “We dump glitter on them.”

“We’ll be instantly found out,” Jali says, thank kriff. “And some of us might be sitting in those seats a couple decades from now.”

“Avir,” Akshita suggests, looking at her fellow Chalactan from the corner of her eye.

Jali looks delighted. “You know how to make it! Of course! Perfect!”

Everyone else is rightfully confused.

“Avir is colored powder that is use in primarily during the Choli festival on Chalacta. It’s known for being bright and somewhat difficult to get off, but not nearly as bad as glitter. As long as you know what to use, it’s rather easy actually. We may end up cleaning the Council room, but it would be well worth it,” Akshita explains. “I have an easy recipe, especially since we have access to the gardens.”

And that’s how they end up grinding up a bunch of powders that are then dropped on the Councilors from a disused viewing area above, now mainly used by Knights and Padawans to spy on the Council.

They’re about to get in trouble when word comes that Mayur has been arrested.

***

Master Lin is molted bright blue and vibrant red, but he is relaying to Akshita and Blue—Viin—the details of Mayur’s arrest. It’s a good thing she’s gotten very good at paying attention no matter if the world is falling apart around her. It means something as small as the Councilors being covered in Avir doesn’t pull her away.

He was trying to get off Corescant. He’s denying his part in this. He killed one of his aides to try and get away.

_He killed one of her people._

She could have forgiven him for ordering her kidnapping and, later, murder. Once he was imprisoned, of course.

Now, she wants to watch him bleed.

Blue rests a hand on her shoulder, grounding her enough to restrain her from charging out of the Temple and into the prison to do just that.

She’s shaking with anger and shame. Yes, logically there was nothing she could have done. But, right now, she feels like she never earned her Greater Mark. No. He did all of this only for himself. She was barely a thought in his mind except as a means to an end. So was the aide. This is not something that will shatter her or break her. This will temper her.

She stops shaking and raises her chin to look Master Lin in the eye. “When Zhaya comes, tomorrow, he and the Chancellor will come here and ask your help in finding me. You will bring them to my apartments here and I will receive them there, with Mister Vhett by my side. I am a Princess of Chalacta, and I will not undermine one of my people’s sacrifice by hiding like a child.”

There is avir on her hands to clean, a recipe to get it off to give to the Councilors, clothes to pick out, instructions to give, and tears to shed behind the curtains of her bed and Viin’s arms.

She’s not just a Princess of Chalacta, she is an Adept of Chalacta. She will not deny herself the abilities she has earned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Akshita has a lot of feelings about not being able to physically protect herself a lot of the time. It's a bit of me projecting. 
> 
> This isn't the only time I'll bring up the weirdness of the Force bond, and time, with these two, but it is probably the biggest moment of it. Feeling all the love you ever will for a person at almost every moment you're with them... It's a lot. Akshita, especially, gets caught up in the patterns. Blue, especially, gets caught out of time by it.
> 
> Space abira! Okay so this is probably the point I'm most "hmm" about because there's not a lot of information about abira, holi powders, and their use. Abira is the word used for the natural colors used by the Odisha during the Holi festival. At the very least, I'm certain that Akshita and co. wouldn't directly use a holy powder for a prank, so it's more accurate that "avir" is used during the festival and outside of it for other reasons, including pranks. I'm still "hmmm" about it though. If anyone is Hindi, I'd love to ask some questions.
> 
> I have no actual clue what Master Tam Lin is. I don't plan on exploring that either. As for Akshita at the end, I really wanted to wrap up all of her emotions of what was going on and her role into one. If anyone pokes at how I write the Prequel-and-on-era Fetts, you'll see this kind of resolution sometimes referred to as a beskar blade. For those same Fetts, they are called particularly "Akshitan" by their family, and actually that branch of both the Fetts and the Billabas (and the Ti's!) are referred to as the Akshitan Billaba dynasty.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Politics and acting are quite the same, when you're a spy.

Blue puts on full armor for the first time since the ransom call, which seems like a year ago with the change in everyone. First it was the way he was brought into the circle of the quartet of agemates as a kind of older-sibling-friend as much as the open secret of being Force-called, the term Pall used, to Akshita, but now it’s the quick serious air that’s taken over all of them.

Casan showed up early enough to wake him and Akshita up, determined to get them all going and humming with nervous energy and air of times he never had time to properly prepare. It’s a new thing for Blue, since coming to the Temple, to see the echoes in air a person brings with them instead of only the place it’s from. He’s not sure he likes it.

Akshita woke up shaking from exertion and stress, legs coltish and nearly collapsing her into his arms. With Casan’s help, they got her to sit on the couch.

Jali arrived next, with their Padawan, a Kel Dor Rei, and a tonne of food liberated from the kitchens. Rei attached to Blue when Jali takes Akshita to the bedroom to pick a suitable Chalactan outfit. Unlike Dix, who is a year younger, Jali’s Padawan is full of quiet thoughts and measured questions. It was only after a few minutes that she and Blue figured out that their natural abilities, their talents, converge very strangely. Between Blue’s expanding touch on the pulse of time and Rei’s stuttering control over her telepathy, they were handing each other things as they ask and exchanging languages.

Finally, once Pall arrived with Dix and news that King Zhaya and his wife have arrived on Coruscant, Blue slips back into the guest room to put on his armor.

When he comes back out, Akshita is sitting on the couch dressed in a vision of maroon, scarlet, and gold instead of the much simpler maroon _salwar kameez_ she had brought out last night.

“It’s an Anarkali suit,” she tells him when she notices his stare, nervously smoothing down the skirt of the tunic, cut as long as a gown but with a slit up to the knee that reveals that matching trousers. Both are a gradient from vibrant, bloody scarlet to dark, dangerous maroon. The leg up to the knee of the trousers was embroidered with intense, shining gold-thread leaves. The same thread decorated the hem and square neckline of the tunic in blooming morning-vines and suns, giving the impression of both more visible trousers and a plunging neckline. Her hair, meanwhile, is mainly tied into one long, thick braid that runs down her back and the four looping braids he is used to seeing swirling around her head like planetary rings are pulled down to spiral around the main braid. She has a nose ring in, with a chain connecting it to an earring, and bracelets that match it swirling down her arms. Instead of her usual heels, layers of golden bells grace her ankles above painted feet. Jali is explaining the process, called _hena_ , to the two Padawans in the room.

Mayur will be lucky if she lets him suffer only whatever her cousin and the Chancellor have in order.

Casan sets up a feed to one of the entry cameras and one he’s placed in the niche above the Council room. That way, they’ll be able to see when the two leaders come to the Temple and meet with the Councilors, and when they leave the room to come to the apartments.

That, they all agree, is when the Jedi will clear out, leaving only Blue to stand behind Akshita when she reveals what has happened.

His weapons are set in the bedroom, to more prove that it is Akshita in charge.

Jali, once their explanation of _hena_ is complete, plans with Blue how to address the Chalactan monarchs.

Akshita pours over her papers about Mayur with Casan.

Dix, Rei, and Pall set about clearing away food once the Chancellor and the King and his wife appear in the first feed.

When they enter the Council room, Blue rises from the couch to take his place standing just behind and to the side of Akshita, so she can take his arm to rise when they enter the apartments. Jali gathers her supplies, Casan prepares the bags to spirit away the feed.

The moment Lin and their guests leave the second feed, the Jedi sweep away their presence, not even leaving dirty teacups in the kitchen.

As the seconds pass, Akshita reaches up to squeeze his hand. He nods back briefly, squeezes back briefly, then they reform their places.

Lin knocks on the door to the apartments.

Showtime.

***

Akshita can see the shock on her cousin’s face, even though he hides it well. They’ve known each other too long, been through too much.

His dear wife, sweet Priya, does not have the training that the cousins have, her horror and shock echoed by the paler widening of eyes and slackened jaw of Chancellor Triph’s reaction.

Blue gives a brief, shallow bow to Zhaya then holds out his arm so she can struggle up. The pain in her legs, more lack of sensation than burning like on the bad days, is true as much as the difficulty it gives her adds to their tableau.

“Cousin, sit,” Zhaya says, seeing her shaking like she saw his shock. He nearly rushes to her but stops himself when Blue helps her settle back onto the couch.

“What is going on?” the Chancellor asks, suspicion building in her voice.

With a beskar edge like one of Blue’s blades, explained the night before, Akshita speaks, “I assure you, my Mandalorian friend only came into my employ _after_ Mayur attempted to have me kidnapped. When presented with certain evidence, I was able to convince him to continue the act in charade instead of truth. We did not expect Mayur’s…violent attempt at fleeing CorSec forces,” she tells them.

“Nor did we expect the command Mayur gave after our unfortunately-necessary ransom call, your highnesses, your excellency,” Blue says through the vocoder of his buy’ce.

The leaders all exchange looks, then accept Master Lin’s invitation to sit in the chairs across from the two of them. The Master of the Order escapes to make tea.

“So you’ve been here this entire time?” Priya asks, looking between them. “Safe?”

Akshita smothers a grimace. “I have been recovering from the initial ordeal, but I have not been in danger since taking sanctuary at the Temple.”

Blue inclines his head with no guilt for doing what he’d been hired, just resignation and acknowledgement.

“They were hidden even from the majority of the Temple population,” Master Lin says, coming back in to settle on Akshita’s other side with a steaming pot and cups for all of them but Blue, who would likely drown himself in the iced remnants after this meeting. “For safety, even before the call.”

Zhaya’s eyes sweep to Blue. “So, Mayur hired you?”

“I’d apparently come recommended, but he didn’t understand what that meant,” Blue says. Then, he reaches into a small pouch he usually keeps his smaller blades in. He places two gold rings on the low table between Akshita and Zhaya. “He very much did not want to part with collateral, but considering it was about all he had left at the time I’m not surprised.”

Akshita nods, bringing forward the datapad detailing Mayur’s recent evacuation of his funds.

“Gambling,” is all Blue adds, the mic cutting off right on the end which makes Akshita suspect he did it to hide a snort.

The Chancellor and Zhaya pour over the documents quickly, nodding as they become increasingly dour.

“There are other things, of course. Nothing was complete before Mister Vhett was hired. Indeed, you’ve seen parts of this already,” Akshita says, passing over datapads with even more information than Jai had given to the Chancellor. “I’d hoped this would have been a quiet affair, before. Even after we came to the Temple, I held out hope.” She shakes her head, finding that beskar edge again. “Of course, when I learned of the circumstances around his arrest, I realized it was an illogical hope where a man like Mayur is concerned.”

Priya nods, reaching over to clasp Akshita’s hands. “I wish we had realized he was so awful, before.”

Akshita smiles, unable to hide the bitter notes from her cousin’s watchful, shamed, gaze. “Everyone wants to believe the best in people. Even a bounty hunter will believe in a contractor’s pocketbook at first.”

Blue cocks his head to the side, obviously amused she’s bringing up his misstep.

“We need a Senator, now, don’t we, Zhaya?” Priya asks.

Zhaya and the Chancellor look horrified at the implications. It would lose them their spy if Akshita took the place as Senator for even a day.

“I know of several ex-patriots that would do a fantastic job as an interim senator if none of Mayur’s aides would consider staying,” Akshita says, smoothing over Priya’s adoration and the others’ concerns in one fell swoop. “As it is, I must be free from any Senatorial duties both to continue my recovery, see to any needs of the court for Mayur’s trial, and prepare for the events in the New Year that require my attendance. Mister Vhett has agreed to stay on in case this flares up any old political anguish.”

Zhaya, sharp eyed as always, tries to pick apart her expression at the last sentence. But she’s pushed back the Force’s influence just for this moment. She’ll feel the outpouring of love again as soon as his suspicions are proved faulty in his own eyes. Finally, he nods and she lets the Force flood back in with relief.

“Priya and I will accompany you back to your owned apartments,” he proclaims.

The Chancellor nods and says her goodbyes, taking along the files on Mayur as well as the files Akshita has been preparing for her in the interim.

Priya insists on helping her pack, though Blue does manage to escort her to the bedroom and gather his weapons before much fuss can be made. Zhaya does notice them but ends up drawing him into a conversation about her security and, though he is veiling it, Mandalorian weaponry.

Nerd.

Priya ends up doing most of the packing, tutting at the chemise style clothing that Akshita has to insist will return from the Temple with her and sneaking in wild amounts of the more traditional clothing that Akshita saves in these apartments for more formal events and returns to Chalacta.

Blue takes the bag as easily as he carried the one that came in, but she’s sure he’ll bring it up before sleep falls upon them. He also supports her as they all go to her speeder and drives it after saying his own goodbyes to Master Lin.

Once Zhaya and Priya have seen them back to the apartments and tutted over the (surprisingly minimal) damage like a pair of aunties, they leave them be with a promise of returning for dinner.

Blue takes off his buy’ce and leaves it on the couch, practically carrying her to her bedroom and settling her on the still downturned sheets before letting her direct him what to do with everything in her bag. He does, indeed, raise an eyebrow at the clothing.

“The _rani_ knows fine things when she sees them, eh?” he asks, using the Chalactan word for the King’s consort, though Priya has yet to earn the title in truth.

“She’s surprisingly straightforward, for all her love of intricate clothing. She has never been able to see me as anything but intelligent,” Akshita says.

That makes Blue smile, eyes warm as he leans down to press their foreheads together. “Then I’ll make it a priority to like her.”

Akshita smiles back.

***

While the Chalactan royals eat dinner, with their own bodyguards suitably close and with Akshita having keyed him into the apartment bloc system, Blue heads back into the underworld to pick up the very small amount of his things not on his ship. His arrest warrant is publicly gone, but he’d have to wear his armor down there either way.

Keno is sitting at the bar and looks wildly amused when he sees Blue.

“Have fun trying to cheat me?” he asks, cuffing the man on the back of the head. “Don’t think I don’t know that you cleaned that bastard out.”

Keno pales in the dim light. “Now, Blue, it was gonna be a sure thing! And, hey, you’re alive and free despite that arrest warrant on your head till today. Not a big deal!”

Blue glances to the bartender, Keno’s on-again-off-again.

The man rolls his eyes, glaring at Keno.

Blue pulls out his blaster. “You set me up to put myself and my people in harm’s way for nothing, you nearly got war declared and nearly got an innocent person killed in all of this. Wait, no. An innocent person _was_ killed in all of this. We all know,” he says, raising his voice and motioning to the other patrons of the bar, gaining their attention, “That the moment you step out of this building you’ve got a warrant. So, what makes you think that trying to cheat a Mandalorian is a good idea?”

Keno’s nearly transparent, he’s so pale.

Someone else calls, “Isn’t that warrant ‘dead or alive’ too?”

Blue cocks his head. “You know, I think it is! Bail jumping murder, so I shouldn’t be so surprised you don’t care about blood on your hands in all this.”

The rabble of the patrons starts growing louder and Blue puts his blaster back. He turns to the bartender. “I’m checking out.”

The bartender grunts, ignoring the way everyone else is closing in on Keno. That’s all the confirmation everyone else needs.

Blue transfers the credits and heads up to the lockers to grab his things—standard for bounty hunters needing a base on Coruscant that isn’t their own ship. Downstairs, he hears blaster bolts and Keno screaming.

One more thorn in his side taken care of, though there’ll just be another scumbag holding this part of the underworld in a few days.

He leaves out the back and heads back to Akshita.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the end of the Mayur Affair! Not a clue when I'll get book two done ;;;
> 
> I made some decisions to use actual, Earth terms for a lot of the things in this chapter because even with keeping in canon compliant this is fanfiction. I could have gone in and invented new words and described them a little more, but that would have taken a lot more time and left you without easily google-able options.
> 
> This chapter really is about how clothes matter in politics.
> 
> SUP HAVE WHY BESKAR BLADES ARE IMPORTANT TO THIS FAMILY. The words come from Blue's side, and he is important, but a lot of the not-quite-Mando traits that show up directly come from Akshita. As i said in the Phir se Karna Bad End fic from a while back, she is the limitless one in the family and her line is referred to as such. 
> 
> Priya, meanwhile, is a favorite side character for me. She's unflinchingly honest, but achingly sweet and intelligent. If this were a fairytale, she'd have been born with a curse of truth and be getting along quite well with it. 
> 
> Anyways, hope no one liked Keno. The power vacuum from his death might play a part in future "books" of Deception in Kyber though.


End file.
